Undoing Depression

Your dad, 66 years old and a retired widower, lives alone. Lately, he has bailed out of his weekly card games and no longer sees his friends.

Could It Be Depression?

Possibly. Given enough stress, anyone will
develop depression , says George Grossberg, M.D., the Samual Fordyce Professor and Director of the Division of Geriatric Psychiatry at St. Louis School of Medicine. So perhaps it's no surprise that depression appears to affect between 13 and 27% of people 65 and older, and an even higher percentage of those confined to hospitals and nursing homes.

Underlying the Depression

"It's a major challenge to adapt to this final stage of life," says Grossberg. "For many there is no family around, there are financial worries, there is the loss of loved ones and friends. It's also a time of life when people reminisce and review their lives. Normally this is healthy, but some people are not able to accept their life as they lived it and their self-esteem plummets."

"If you think about it," adds Mary Pipher, Ph.D., a Lincoln, Neb., psychotherapist and author of Another Country: The Emotional Terrain of Our Elders (Riverhead Books, 1999), "they're really trauma victims. Many have lost their mates, friends, health, habits, and homes."

Researching her book led Pipher to conclude that many of the "old-old," the term she uses for those elderly people who have begun to lose their health, are depressed because of changes in our society. People are living longer, but often they live far away from their families. Grandma no longer has a room in the family home or a role to play tending the baby or preparing family meals. Instead, she lives by herself, isolated, lonely, and with little opportunity to feel useful or important in a youth-oriented culture.